Muti rules in Salzburg

SALZBURG, Austria — The countdown continues for Riccardo Muti's long-awaited arrival in Chicago. Yes, it's finally happening.

Before coming to the city Sept. 15 to prepare for a busy series of inaugural concerts as the 10th music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the celebrated Neapolitan maestro has other obligations to fulfill in other parts of the world. The foremost of these is a series of opera and concert engagements in this picturesque, tourist-laden town that Mozart made world-famous.

Since the death of the superstar Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan in 1989, Muti has ruled as unofficial crown prince of the Salzburg summer and spring festivals. The prolonged ovations he received following sold-out performances I heard him conduct in recent weeks left no doubt he's become as much an audience favorite here as his fabled predecessor. Even with seats priced as high as $477 for opera and $258 for symphony concerts, Muti remains a formidable draw.

The 90th Salzburg summer festival marks a major anniversary for Muti: the 40th consecutive year of his affiliation with the Vienna Philharmonic, a milestone unique among living conductors. Last week he led his 200th Salzburg performance with that great orchestra — a concert devoted to the oratorio drawn from Sergei Prokofiev's score to Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein's classic 1944-46 film, "Ivan the Terrible."

Muti's reputation for uncompromising devotion to the highest artistic standards again was put to the test with the two productions he presided over this month at Europe's oldest and swankiest summerfest — the Prokofiev oratorio and a new production of Gluck's great "reform" opera, "Orfeo ed Euridice" ("Orpheus and Eurydice").

When I spoke with the 69-year-old Italian over dinner at the beautiful Austrian chalet he and his wife, Cristina Mazzavillani, have occupied since 1991 in the leafy environs of Salzburg, he made plain his disagreement with Dieter Dorn, the German stage director, over the latter's staging of "Orfeo."

"Look through the score, and what expressive markings do you see?" Muti said. "Dolce (tender). Grazioso (graceful). You see these words on nearly every page. The Italian text to the first (1762) version of the opera is by Calzabigi, a great Neapolitan poet and a great man of letters. Mr. Dorn did not pay attention to any of that, nor did he seem to want to. And he wasn't interested in my thoughts as the conductor of this piece."

Of course Muti could have pulled rank and walked out of the production, thereby risking a flurry of headlines such as marked his famously stormy departure as artistic director of Milan's La Scala opera house in 2005, after a tenure of 19 years. But — popular image notwithstanding — Muti has never been an inflexible autocrat of the baton, nor an egomaniacal seeker of sensation for its own dubious sake. He always has been deeply serious about his art. And he remains outspoken when he feels his collaborators don't share his ideals.

As with Stephen Langridge's staging of Verdi's "Otello" in Salzburg in 2008 — another Muti-conducted production that failed, in his view, to adhere to the composer's intentions — the maestro made his peace with a dramatic concept that was foreign to his view of Gluck's masterpiece. And so the principled perfectionist did his thing while director Dorn did his. The twain never met.

The result, for me, was musically affecting and visually enticing, even though the show went off the rails at the end. The best part was the ravishing instrumental work Muti drew from the Viennese musicians, complemented by distinguished choral singing. The orchestra sound had extraordinary grace, refinement and beauty, and great care was taken as to the balance and blending of voices and instruments.

Austrian mezzo-soprano Elisabeth Kulman as the lyre-playing hero, soprano (and Salzburg native) Genia Kuhmeier as Euridice and German soprano Christiane Karg as the god Amor all were admirable in everything they sang. "Che faro senza Euridice," the famed outpouring of despair delivered by Orfeo after losing his beloved a second time, was movingly sung. Kulman had strong vocal presence even if her dramatic presence wasn't as striking. Kuhmeier capitalized on purity of timbre and poised, lyrical phrasing.

Dorn and designers Jurgen Rose (sets and costumes) and Tobias Loffler (lighting) set the timeless myth in a clean, modern theater space equipped with a moving circular sidewalk on which Orfeo led Euridice from the underworld. Flanking the singers were mirrored panels that at various moments magnified the writhing of the hellish furies and shades and allowed the blessed spirits of Elysium to walk on the ocean waves, bathed in radiant sunlight. So far, so agreeable.

Where the director got into trouble was in the final scene. While the reunited lovers embraced and the chorus extolled the triumph of love, Dorn had various other couples hurl themselves into an increasingly violent series of spats, fights and failed reconciliations. This attempt to show that love in the "real" world often can be anything but a romp in the Elysium fields merely heaped postmodern irony on an opera in which such irony had no place.

Put Muti in total command of a performance, and something more consistently inspired can result. It certainly did with "Ivan the Terrible."

His performances and EMI recording of Russian conductor Abram Stasevich's oratorio based on Prokofiev's score to Eisenstein's unfinished film were among the highlights of his tenure with London's Philharmonia Orchestra during the 1970s. Muti is planning to bring "Ivan" to Chicago a couple of seasons hence. If his CSO performances are anything as good as the one I heard last week in Salzburg, Chicagoans have something momentous to look forward to.

Despite some music having been rearranged, Stasevich's 80-minute oratorio is faithful to the sweeping force and epic power of the Eisenstein film (a third part was never completed because of Stalinist censorship). Although the excellent vocal soloists, mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina and bass Ildar Abdrazakov, were the only Russians taking part, the performance was full of Slavic soul, blazing with taut musical force and dramatic urgency under Muti's firm command.

The conductor's friend, French actor Gerard Depardieu, learned Russian to take on the speaking role of the medieval Russian czar, and he threw himself into his duties with terrifying power, making a riveting, pitiable figure of the enigmatic ruler. (Depardieu will be in Chicago to participate in Muti's CSO performances of Berlioz's "Lelio.") Jan Josef Luefers made a splendid narrator, while the playing of the Vienna Philharmonic and singing of the Vienna State Opera Chorus and the children's chorus made it special.

The tight unity of podium and orchestra reminded me of something Muti told me the night before about the necessity of building a relationship based on "mutual respect." The close musical rapport he has built over time with the Vienna Philharmonic he also has established in shorter order with the Chicago Symphony and is something he hopes to develop further as he settles into his new position.

When I asked him what, if anything, he would change about the CSO when he begins his tenure here next month, he replied, "A music director who comes in thinking he will change everything — that is wrong. When you start a relationship with someone but tell that person you want to change this or that, it means you are not in love with that person. But if the respect is there, if there is an appreciation of how the conductor and orchestra are making music together, then a true relationship will come naturally out of that.

"Of course I have my personality, my way of thinking, my way of programming, my concept of sound. I think I can do a certain kind of work, counting also on the contributions of other great conductors who can come here and share with me this path. I am looking forward to that very much."

I'll have more to say about other events I heard at this year's Salzburg Festival, including productions of Strauss' "Elektra" and Berg's "Lulu," later in the week.

The festival runs to Aug. 30; salzburg

festival.at.

jvonrhein@tribune.com